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UK Trident Replacement a 'Material Breach' of the NPT

Trident Replacement would be a Material Breach of the NPT, say Eminent UK Lawyers as Britain Begins to Debate Nuclear Policy

Public debate on whether the UK should replace its Trident nuclear weapons when the time comes is now gathering momentum with politicians from different political parties the Houses of Commons and Lords joining in. The Autumn 2005 issue of Disarmament Diplomacy reproduced an op-ed published in the Guardian by the late Robin Cook, arguing that a new nuclear weapon system for the UK would be 'worse than irrelevant'. Other politicians have followed, from all the major parties, as illustrated by the selection reproduced below.

Even more significantly, on December 19, 2005, the prestigious Matrix Chambers (London) published an important legal opinion on "The Maintenance and Possible Replacement of the Trident Nuclear Missile System". In this opinion, Rabinder Singh QC and Professor Christine Chinkin (LSE) concluded that:

(1) The use of the Trident system would breach customary international law, in particular because it would infringe the "intransgressible" requirement that a distinction must be drawn between combatants and non-combatants.

(2) The replacement of Trident is likely to constitute a breach of article VI of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

(3) Such a breach would be a material breach of that treaty.

Space does not permit us to reprint the full legal opinion in this issue, but it is available at: http://www.acronym.org.uk/docs/0512/doc06.htm, and will be reproduced in Disarmament Diplomacy 82 (Spring 2006).

Op-eds in the UK Press

Among the op-eds below are articles from past and present politicians and military officers: Lord Garden, Michael Portillo, Clare Short, and David Clark.

Lord Tim Garden posed some of the central questions, concerning what Trident would be for, why the decision is being pushed for now, and what the new nuclear system (or options) would cost. He then suggests some ways forward that would get the government out of the hole it is digging for itself.

In July, Michael Portillo, who as former Conservative Secretary of State for Defence defended the UK's possession of Trident, wrote an op-ed in the Times making a powerful case against replacement: "We could be more powerful and a more useful ally for America if we did not waste money on renewing the nuclear deterrent." (See below.)

Writing in the Independent, Clare Short MP, until 2003 Secretary of State for International Development, argues that a replacement for Trident would be irrelevant to the real issues that the UK faces. Short writes, "Our most urgent need is to create global agreement to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and create a new economic model based on greater equity and a more sustainable economic system. The honourable role for the UK is to work with others to reinforce respect for international law, strengthen multilateral institutions, promote peace and security and sustainable development worldwide. A new nuclear weapon is irrelevant to this." (See below.)

Similarly, in the Guardian, former Labour adviser David Clark also argues for those who have supported British nuclear weapons previously, particularly within the Labour Party, to reconsider: "[T]he strategic context couldn't be more different [from the 1980s]. Indeed, there are good reasons for those who supported the party's decision to abandon unilateral disarmament then to oppose the replacement of Trident now." (See below.)

Parliamentary Questions and Debate

In a Defence debate on November 17, 2005. Members of Parliament from all the political parties - including both supporters of Trident replacement and opponents - called for a full and transparent debate on the subject.

Former Labour Defence Minister Peter Kilfoyle MP called for a full review of Britain's security priorities before any decision was made. "We are in a different world and about to embark on a new course. There is no more suitable time for a complete review of what our defence objectives, strategy and priorities should be... The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, not the military, should lead such a review."[1]

There is also considerable cross-party support for the Government to publish a consultative paper on the issue. As Conservative Defence spokesperson Julian Lewis MP points out, "in the run-up to Trident, the then Conservative Government published a series of open government defence documents that aired the arguments about the decision to replace Polaris with Trident... if the Government are serious about starting the debate, they should begin by publishing a similar rationale, so that the public debate can get under way as to why we need a successor or, indeed, why we do not?"[2]

Similarly, as Michael Moore MP (Liberal Democrat) notes, "If we are to be able to make a decision on the replacement of Trident... a properly informed debate is needed beforehand. There are significant questions about the timing - why now? We need information about the options being considered and the costs that go with them, assessing not only whether it is a cost that the country can afford, but the opportunity costs in the sense of what will be lost if we divert resources to that particular investment. We also need a full and frank debate about the strategic context, not just about the nature of the threat - we need to bear in mind that we are trying to predict 20 or 30 years on."[3]

Labour supporters of a new nuclear weapon system to replace Trident also support the need for real debate and democratic decision-making. David Wright MP told the House of Commons, "I hope that we will have a wide-ranging debate about how appropriate that is, in the sense that the world has changed somewhat... I put it clearly on the record that I would support the Government and vote for the replacement of the independent nuclear deterrent. I am not suggesting that we abandon it, but I am not sure that we need to go for an extremely expensive deterrent option. We must look at a raft of options."[4]

Calling for Consultations

There is widespread parliamentary support for the Government to set out the strategic context for this decision, including details of all the options under consideration and the costs associated with each option. An early day motion calling for the government to publish a "consultation paper setting out the issues, including threat assessments, estimated costs and all nuclear and non-nuclear options, as a basis for the public debate,"[5] has attracted cross party support.

During Defence Oral Questions, the Secretary of State for Defence, John Reid, a close ally of Prime Minister Tony Blair, said that he would consider the possibility of a consultative paper at a later date.

Responding to calls for Select Committee inquiries into the question of Trident replacement, the Defence Select Committee has announced that it will conduct an inquiry, due to "the extensive public interest in the future of the UK's strategic nuclear deterrent".[6] There have also been calls for this inquiry to be held jointly with the Foreign Affairs Committee. As Jeremy Corbyn MP suggests, "The Defence Committee ought to be joined by the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs. The Defence Committee has responsibility for defence matters, but it does not have responsibility for disarmament policy nor, indeed, for the operation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which is clearly relevant... [the Foreign Affairs Committee] would make an important contribution to the public debate."[7] James Arbuthnot MP, chair of the Defence Committee has said that he would consider a joint inquiry.

With Members of Parliament from all the major political parties united by the call for a full public debate, the only policy-maker that seems to be reluctant to join in is the Government. In October, Prime Minister Tony Blair told the Commons, "I am sure that there will be a debate."[8]

However, it is not yet clear what form this debate will take - whether the government will allocate time for a specific debate on the subject, or whether it will allow MPs to vote. Meanwhile, Defence Secretary John Reid is currently declining to answer questions from MPs concerning the options under consideration, costs, or even the timescale of a decision, on the grounds that it is "too early" to say. Reid states, "While decisions on the long term future of the UK nuclear deterrent are likely to be necessary in the current Parliament, they are still some way off. It is therefore too early to say what formal or informal procedures might be used to underpin future decision-making by the Government in this area."[9]

The Ministry of Defence is also refusing to answer Freedom of Information requests on the Trident replacement decision "on the grounds of damage to national security or to international relations, or prejudice to the effective conduct of public affairs".

Minds Already Made Up?

Whilst the government insists that no decision has yet been taken, hints have been dropped as to what the thinking of senior figures will be. Jack Straw MP, the Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs, has indicated that he would support a replacement of Trident, telling New Statesman magazine, "I'm sorry that we live in this world, but I support the replacement of Trident."[11]

Similarly, Blair told the Commons, "I do not think that anyone pretends that the independent nuclear deterrent is a defence against terrorism; none the less, I believe that it is an important part of our defence... It is too early to rule in or rule out any particular option. As we set out in our manifesto, we are committed to retaining the UK's independent nuclear deterrent."[12]

Whilst this appears to suggest that the government was elected with a manifesto commitment to support Trident replacement, under questioning from the House of Commons Defence Committee Reid was forced to clarify that the manifesto did not refer to a successor to Trident. As Reid told the Committee, "You may ask how long that manifesto pledge lasts. Technically it is for the life of a Parliament, but I think all reasonable people would assume it to apply for the life of the Trident system."[13]

It is also worth noting that the Labour government was originally elected with a manifesto pledge to "press for multilateral negotiations toward mutual, balanced and verifiable reductions in nuclear, chemical and biological weapons worldwide". The 1997 Manifesto stated, "When satisfied with verified progress towards our goal of the global elimination of nuclear weapons, we will ensure British nuclear weapons are included in such negotiations."[14]

John Reid gave the Defence Committee some further indications of the Government's thinking: "We have always maintained that as long as some other nuclear state which is a potential threat has nuclear weapons we will retain ours."[15] As David Clark trenchantly observes, "This sounds more like an argument for universal proliferation than anything else." (See below.)

Committing Substantial Money in Advance

Although no decision has officially been taken, the Ministry of Defence has already embarked on a major upgrade to facilities at the UK's Atomic Weapons Establishments (AWE) at Aldermaston and Burghfield,[16] costing an extra £350m for each of the next three years. This billion pound investment will effectively double AWE's budget over the next three years,[17] and yet was awarded by the government without any parliamentary scrutiny or debate.

The Ministry of Defence insists that the upgrade is a "planned investment", which is "required to sustain the existing warhead stockpile in-service and this is required irrespective of decisions on a successor warhead".[18]

The scale of the investment at this stage in the Trident warhead's service life has raised suspicions that these extra funds may also allow AWE to spend more of its existing budget on efforts to "maintain a capability to design a new weapon",[19] which has been an AWE objective since the 1998 Strategic Defence Review. As Robin Cook wrote, "Down at Aldermaston they are spending hundreds of millions of pounds of your money on a refit of the production line for nuclear warheads. We are assured this does not mean that any decision has been made to replace the Trident nuclear system. Dear me no, the investment is merely intended to keep open our options."[20]

Indeed, some have suggested that the government's push for a decision in this Parliament is driven more by pressure from the nuclear industry for a green light, than by strategic or military prerogatives.

Given the changed strategic context in which Britain now finds itself, it is vital that any decision by the UK on whether to replace Trident is open, informed, transparent and accountable, including full parliamentary scrutiny of all the options under consideration.

Disarmament Diplomacy will continue to support greater public debate on this issue, including the need for the government to undertake a comprehensive strategic security and defence review; to publish a consultative paper setting out all the options; and for the Ministry of Defence to give full answers to parliamentary questions and Freedom of Information requests on this subject.

Compiled by Nicola Butler. Further news and articles concerning the question of whether the UK should replace its Trident nuclear force are available at: http://www.acronym.org.uk/uk.

Notes

[1] House of Commons, Hansard, November 17, 2005, column 1160.

[2] House of Commons, Hansard, November 17, 2005, Column 1160.

[3] House of Commons, Hansard, November 17, 2005, Column 1163.

[4] House of Commons, Hansard, November 17, 2005, column 1171.

[5] EDM 1113, David Chaytor, November 24, 2005.

[6] House of Commons Defence Committee, Operational Note, July 21, 2005.

[7] House of Commons, Hansard, November 17, 2005, column 1176.

[8] House of Commons, Hansard, October 19, 2005, column 841.

[9] House of Commons, Hansard, October 14, 2005, column 619W.

[10] 'Future Nuclear Deterrent: MOD publishes replies to Greenpeace Freedom of Information requests', Ministry of Defence News Release, September 27, 2005.

[11] Mary Riddel, 'NS Interview - Jack Straw', New Statesman, November 14, 2005.

[12] House of Commons, Hansard, October 19, 2005, column 841.

[13] Uncorrected Transcript of Oral Evidence, General Evidence Session with the Secretary of State for Defence, November 1, 2005, to be published as HC 556-1.

[14] 'new Labour: new life for Britain', Labour Party Manifesto 1997.

[15] Uncorrected Transcript of Oral Evidence, General Evidence Session with the Secretary of State for Defence, November 1, 2005, to be published as HC 556-1.

[16] See 'Why is Britain's Nuclear Weapons Infrastructure Being Upgraded?' Disarmament Diplomacy, Issue No. 76, March/April 2004.

[17] House of Commons, Hansard, October 10, 2005, column 16W.

[18] 'PRESS NOTICE: Facilities Upgrade for Atomic Weapons Establishment' MoD, July 19, 2005, http://news.mod.uk/news/press/news_press_notice.asp?newsItem_id=3401

[19] AWE website at http://www.awe.co.uk.

[20] Robin Cook, 'Worse than Irrelevant', Disarmament Diplomacy 80, Autumn 2005.

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The Future of UK Nuclear Weapons

Lord (Tim) Garden (former Air Marshal, Royal Air Force), www.tgarden.demon.co.uk, September 22, 2005. This article was first published in RUSI Defence Systems, Volume 8 Number 2, Autumn 2005, www.rusi.org.

Somewhat to the surprise of most analysts, the British Government has decided to bring the question of nuclear weapon policy to the fore. This raises a series of questions. Why now? What will it be for? What are the costs? What is the best way forward?

When must we decide?

The original decision on the Trident programme was announced on 15 July 1980 and the first boat was operational in 1994 with a planned life of 30 years. If any successor system were to take as long, a decision would be needed in 2010 for the first replacement in 2024. This could be extended by the phased changeover as the fourth Trident submarine does not go out of service until 2029. Of course the decision could be taken even later with life extension programmes, and also through a more rapid procurement. On the face of it , we can take some time coming to a decision.

What is it for?

Now state based threats are much reduced, it is difficult to outline a convincing scenario in which the UK deterrent plays a key part. However by the mid 2020s we might be in a very different world. A replacement system would have to counter possible challenges in the period 2025 to 2055. We have no crystal ball to tell us whether the threats will be from undeterrable non-state actors, or from a return to nationalism with nuclear-armed potential enemies. Nor can we know if the world will have become more peaceful, and nuclear weapons a historic irrelevance. Future uncertainty argues for leaving the decision as late as practical, if we are understand the strategic context.

Beyond the defence rationale, arguments about the importance of nuclear weapons to Britain's place in the world are often used. While such arguments may have had some credibility in the immediate post Second World War period, economic strength has become a more important factor in the age of globalisation. In any future reform of the United Nations, membership of the Security Council will not be decided on the basis of nuclear weapon ownership.

A more compelling foreign policy rationale for retaining our minimum deterrent force is that it gives the UK a significant card to play in future nuclear disarmament negotiations. All the nuclear powers have undertaken commitments under the Non Proliferation Treaty progressively to reduce their nuclear arsenals. The UK retains some leverage on this process while it has some weapons.

Can we afford it?

In any analysis of future defence capability, the question of costs must be a major consideration. Acquisition of Trident cost £12.52 bn at 1998 prices, with running costs of around £700m per year. Just as Trident procurement was described in 1982 as being comparable to the Tornado acquisition, we might expect a successor to bear comparison with Typhoon or aircraft carrier costs. It is unlikely that any nuclear certified system can be procured cheaply.

The related cost question will be whether the need for a particular system merits its share of the defence budget.. The effect on other conventional capabilities - the opportunity costs - are likely to be considerable. Again a lack of knowledge of our conventional needs and available resources so far in the future argues for commitment at the latest possible stage.

What should we do?

The relatively low running costs of Trident, coupled with high decommissioning costs, mean that there is no strong rationale for taking it out of service early. If some future international arms control opportunity arose, where we could improve our security, by reducing or eliminating our nuclear weapons, then it might be a different calculation. Such a possibility does not look likely in the near future.

Any radically new nuclear system, whether ballistic or cruise missile based, would involve significant development costs for the platform, missile and warhead. Such costs would put further pressure on a defence budget which is already finding it difficult to retain coherence. Nor is it clear that such systems could contribute to our security needs beyond deterring indeterminate future nuclear threats. The constraints of the NPT would cause further complications.

The most sensible answer is likely to be that we should keep the Trident system going with life extension programmes, when needed. We can have a useful public debate about the future of UK nuclear weapons, but we would be foolish to rush into decisions that are likely to prove costly and irrelevant.

Tim Garden is the Liberal Democrat Defence spokesperson in the House of Lords, a former nuclear bomber pilot and author of books and articles on nuclear strategy.

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Does Britain need nuclear missiles? No. Scrap them

Michael Portillo, The Sunday Times, July 19, 2005.

I don't want you to think me hopelessly incompetent, but when I was defence secretary I managed to make a hash of launching Britain's nuclear deterrent. I was on board one of the four enormous submarines that carry bunches of the Trident missile and the Royal Navy was demonstrating to me what would happen if the call came from No 10 to unleash mayhem against the enemy.

The secret codes arrived and were matched. The dual keys were inserted and the moment came when I was invited to press the button.

You may not have given much thought to the proper manner of initiating Armageddon. I gave the button a little stab as one might when pressing nine for an outside line. Be warned, reader, you need to press hard and long.

My effete attempt to obliterate Britain's foes led the system to enter an abort sequence. Bells clanged, lights flashed and sirens whooped. I think it might have been quieter if I had fired the missile. It was not easy to disguise the fact that I had goofed. While the crew struggled to reboot the boat's computers, I was led away for a less demanding briefing on the sonar array, this time strictly hands-off.

Perhaps it is wrong to be flippant about the dreadful destructive power that Britain keeps lurking under the waves 24 hours a day and 365 days a year. But the point is that nowadays nobody expects it to be used. That was the position when I visited the submarine nearly a decade ago.

The Soviet Union collapsed long ago. There is no threat from China. The new nuclear weapons states, from India to Israel, do not have the capability to hit us. Relations between Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac may be strained, but as yet we have no reason to fear a nuclear strike from la force de frappe.

So it seems rather surprising that according to some reports the government has decided to replace the Trident D5 missile and the submarines that carry it, at a cost of tens of billions of pounds.

Blair prides himself on being forward looking. His flexible mind impatiently discards the shibboleths of old think. Labour started its period in government with a review of defence policy to take account of the end of the cold war. But none of that new realism is allowed to affect the doctrine of Britain's independent nuclear deterrent.

Blair is scarred by the experience of Michael Foot, whose policy of unilateral nuclear disarmament cost Labour dearly in the 1983 election. A Tory poster parodied his defence policy by showing an unarmed British soldier with his hands raised in surrender. Foot's manifesto was described as the longest suicide note in history.

But in those days there was a Soviet Union and an arms race. Even so by 1986 President Reagan (not generally thought a patsy) sought agreement with Mikhail Gorbachev at the Reykjavik summit to abolish both countries' nuclear weapons. He was restrained by Margaret Thatcher, who argued rightly that since the world cannot un-invent the technology, the United States must maintain a nuclear deterrent.

The arguments for Britain are quite different. Blair lacks the flexibility even to bring his thinking into line with where Reagan's was nearly 20 years ago.

The case for Britain having an independent nuclear deterrent depended on the existence of the Soviet Union. That superpower had the capacity to launch warheads simultaneously to wipe out the cities and the land-based nuclear forces of the United States and western Europe.

Confronting such a well equipped enemy, we had to complicate his calculations. The Russians might not believe that America would risk nuclear war in defence of its European allies. So France and the UK acquired their own systems to reduce the uncertainty and increase the deterrence.

Three Nato nations would have submarine-launched missiles and the Soviet Union could not hope to trace all of them. Russia could not mount a first strike without the near certainty that in response Moscow would be obliterated.

None of those considerations applies today. Whatever residual risk may be posed by Russia's poorly managed nuclear arsenal can be handled by the United States. If the UK diverts billions of pounds from its future defence budgets into nuclear weapons that will never be used, it will have less money to spend on useful things such as aircraft carriers and submarines that fire cruise missiles. We could be more powerful and a more useful ally for America if we did not waste money on renewing the nuclear deterrent.

Apparently Downing Street does not want to allow the French to become Europe's only nuclear weapons power. It's an argument that would look well in a Yes, Minister script, but in real life it is beneath contempt.

What advantage does France reap from its nuclear status? Certainly in our diplomatic dealings with Paris we never give it a thought. Is Blair seriously arguing that we should spend billions of pounds on a nuclear upgrade not because it is necessary or useful but because we don't want the French to feel smug? If there were any merit in having nuclear weapons we could quite cheaply attach a warhead to a cruise missile that would be fired from an aircraft. Some defence mandarins are horrified at the idea because it would remove the element of surprise. But in truth that is just a "boys' toys" argument: they simply want the most complex system possible for its own sake. We have no need to surprise, say, North Korea. The more notice it has that we are loading the weapon onto the plane the better our chance of avoiding war.

In reality our most likely nuclear opponent is not a country but an urban guerrilla detonating a dirty bomb in a suitcase in one of our cities. Trident would be ready to retaliate and someone better trained than I could fire it. But at whom, exactly? Whitehall thinks that possessing nuclear weapons helps to secure Britain's position as one of the five permanent members of the United Nations security council. But if the ability to blow up the planet is the qualification for presiding over the world's peacemaking body, then we should already have rewarded India, Pakistan and Israel with membership and we should be preparing to welcome Iran and North Korea.

It is a dangerous line of argument. We encourage developing countries to believe that we will take them more seriously and invite them to the top table if they acquire nuclear weapons. Indeed, since Pakistan joined the nuclear club and recklessly spread weapons technology to the world's most terrifying states, General Musharraf, its leader, has been feted by President Bush.

In general the West's approach to proliferation is desperately muddled. The US gives the impression that it might go to war to stop Iran getting the bomb. That cannot be because it is a Muslim country nor because it gives its secrets to rogue states, since those points apply to Pakistan. Is it because Iran is not a democracy? In the past week it has voted for its president. Musharraf is unelected.

Britain welcomed Ukraine's decision to give up its membership of the nuclear club voluntarily. If it is right for Kiev, why is it unthinkable for us? Blair purports to lead the world towards eradicating world poverty and reversing climate change. However, when it comes to non-proliferation he remains silent.

Whether Blair will reduce global inequality or carbon emissions must be highly doubtful because it is not in his gift. However, it lies entirely in his hands to make a unilateral cut in the global arsenal of weapons and to lead the world by example.

It may be wrong to blame Blair alone. Apparently Gordon Brown is complicit in his decision. The Labour party is asleep. The Tories are too busy counting angels on the head of a pin to think about the world beyond London SW1.

Britain is about to spend sums on new nuclear weapons that dwarf our newfound generosity to Africa. The paltry sum of our European Union rebate doesn't stand comparison. Yet the chances are that Britain will commit itself to new weapons without debate.

Our political system fails us again. If only there were a switch we could throw to put it right. But don't ask me to do it. I would just cock it up.

Michael Portillo is a former Conservative Secretary of State for Defence.

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A new nuclear weapon is irrelevant to the real issues

Clare Short MP, The Independent, November 1, 2005.

Tony Blair has let it be known that a decision will be made on whether to replace Trident during the lifetime of his government. Given the track record of Blair and his Defence Secretary, John Reid, we can be almost certain that the decision has already been made.

However, a debate has been promised and, given that even Michael Portillo, a former Conservative defence secretary, thinks there's no point in replacing Trident, it will be interesting to see whether the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) is willing to swallow this alongside so many other policies that fly in the face of Labour's history and values.

One of the saddest things about the broken state of British politics is the way in which the spirit of the Labour Party has been undermined by Blair. For so many local members, there is no point in staying to fight because the party's internal democratic system has been crushed. The PLP has been kept in line by large majorities, traditions of loyalty, the lure of patronage and the power of the whips. There is enormous unhappiness in the PLP, but the question is, is there a breaking point?

The political case against the replacement of Trident is overwhelmingly strong. To address it, we need to ask what role we want our country to play on the world stage. Should we continue to act as a fig leaf for the US and pretend that a nuclear weapon supplied and serviced by them somehow makes us a significant power? Or do we understand that the threat of global warming, the growth of the world population, and the loss of environmental resources is the most important threat to the future of human civilisation?

Our most urgent need is to create global agreement to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and create a new economic model based on greater equity and a more sustainable economic system. The honourable role for the UK is to work with others to reinforce respect for international law, strengthen multilateral institutions, promote peace and security and sustainable development worldwide. A new nuclear weapon is irrelevant to this.

There is also a strong argument that a weapon to replace Trident would breach the non-proliferation treaty. The treaty obliges the nuclear weapon states to reduce and then eliminate nuclear weapons.

There is no point in spending large quantities of money to buy a new nuclear weapon which is targeted at no one to feed the delusion that the UK is a great power. There would be no prospect of the UK using it without US approval. If the UK replaces Trident, we will be locked into the role of US poodle for another generation.

The important question is whether enough Labour MPs will feel that this is their breaking point with Blair.

Clare Short is a Labour MP and former Secretary of State for International Development.

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The Blairite love affair with the bomb will cost Britain dear

Replacing Trident would be a scandalous waste of public funds. The case for it is an argument for universal proliferation

David Clark, The Guardian, November 1, 2005.

Tony Blair is trying to look purposeful as he enters his final stretch as prime minister; but on what may prove to be the most important decision of his remaining time in office, he continues to send mixed signals. A formal announcement on a replacement for Britain's Trident nuclear force is expected in this parliament, and we are told that no options are being ruled out, including the option of not replacing it. As if to underline how unlikely this is, we are also told that the government is "committed to retaining Britain's independent nuclear deterrent".

This might be called the Vicky Pollard approach to defence policy - "No but yeah but no". Like the Little Britain character, the government hides behind incoherence, hoping that those looking for answers about how and when a decision is going to be taken will give up out of sheer exasperation. Nevertheless, there can be little doubt about where this debate is heading. Blair's insistence that all options are on the table is about as convincing as his insistence at the start of 2003 that no decision had been taken to invade Iraq. Don't be surprised to discover at some point in the future that we have already passed the Crawford moment on Trident replacement.

Like Iraq, the decision will have been taken in principle long before it is announced in public; and like Iraq, it will be taken for the worst of all reasons - as an act of political positioning. Real security considerations are a negligible factor in the development of Labour's nuclear-weapons policy, the burden of the past weighing too heavily for objectivity to intrude. For ministers who toiled through the wilderness years, the idea that Labour might once again embrace unilateralism is enough to induce a nervous tick. Fearing the "I told you so" scorn of the opposition benches and Wapping editorialists, New Labour will spend billions of pounds of public money to prove yet again that it is not old Labour in disguise.

Some will even relish the controversy. Never skipping an opportunity to win kudos on the right by fighting their own party, the Blairites will seek to construct this debate as a re-run of the one that absorbed Labour throughout the 1980s, portraying anyone opposed to nuclear modernisation as a throwback to a failed Bennite past. But the strategic context couldn't be more different. Indeed, there are good reasons for those who supported the party's decision to abandon unilateral disarmament then to oppose the replacement of Trident now. It is the Blairites who remain stuck in the past.

The salient fact is that Britain faces no threat remotely comparable to the one that confronted it during the cold war. What Nato had to contend with then was a Soviet Union armed not just with nuclear weapons, but with an overwhelming superiority in conventional forces and the ability to project it across western Europe. It was this integrated war-fighting capability that had to be deterred, and the existence of a separate British nuclear capability added credibility to Nato's defensive posture. Opponents of the British bomb argued that the Soviet Union was a status quo power, uninterested in world domination, and that in any case the British deterrent wasn't truly independent

There was a degree of truth in the first argument and rather a lot in the second, but the idea that it would be better to keep nuclear weapons just in case was always more convincing than the suggestion that we could depend on the goodwill of the Soviet leadership for our security. For how long would the Soviet Union have remained a status quo power if the prospect of an easy victory against the west had been in the offing? That, in a nutshell, is why Labour kept losing the argument in the 1980s.

But where is the territorial threat to Britain today? Certainly not from Russia. Although it has taken a pronounced authoritarian turn, it has trouble enough holding on to its own sovereign territory in the northern Caucasus and has no prospect of recovering its lost superpower status. The now fashionable threat scenarios of rogue tyrants holding the world to ransom with weapons of mass destruction owe more to the evil supervillains and doomsday machines of popular fiction than any serious strategic analysis.

Countries such as North Korea and Iran may stockpile modest nuclear arsenals, but they will never acquire the means to incapacitate a western country with a first strike, the essence of a real war-fighting capability. Deterrence means instilling in the mind of a potential adversary the inevitability that aggression would meet with a devastating response. Since the west has the means to do this with conventional force alone, the threat of incinerating a rogue state's population with a nuclear strike would have no additional deterrence value. Does President Ahmadinejad's recent outburst change the strategic equation as far as Britain is concerned? No, but it might make sense for those living at a safe distance to be less judgmental of Israel's nuclear programme. The emerging nuclear threats are regional in scope.

Perhaps aware of how implausible these scenarios are, the government's last line of defence is to argue that we cannot know what security challenges Britain will face in 2025 when Trident reaches the end of its operational life. But what country couldn't say the same? This sounds more like an argument for universal proliferation than anything else. Besides, the scale of threat requiring a British nuclear response would take years, and probably decades, to emerge. If we wanted to hedge against that remote possibility, we could retain the research and development capacity to reconstitute a nuclear force within a realistic timescale, and at much lower cost. This status of "virtual" nuclear power is more or less the one occupied by Japan, a country with far more obvious deterrence needs.

Issues of prestige mean that getting out of the nuclear business would be a courageous step, similar in many ways to the Wilson government's decision to pull back from east of Suez in 1967. It would make a statement of realism about Britain's role in the world and how to maximise its impact with finite resources. Anything else would be a scandalous waste of public funds and ought to be opposed even by those of a hawkish disposition, on the pragmatic grounds that the money should be spent on capabilities with actual military use.

Unfortunately, it says something depressing about modern British politics that it is in many ways easier to imagine this being done by a Conservative government, unencumbered by the need to fight its demons and advertise its toughness, than by the current Labour leadership. Ministers will continue to obfuscate for the time being, but all the signs are that Labour is set to enjoy the unique distinction of having held two diametrically opposed positions on nuclear weapons within the space of 20 years - and being equally wrong on both occasions.

David Clark is a former senior adviser to the Labour government on foreign policy.

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